SPICEBAG
2015
This is my Steam review from 2016 after 100 hours. I still firmly believe all of it.
Fresh install gets stuck on the main menu loading screen indefinitely.
This is more of an FPS than an RPG, which is something I wanted from Fallout 4, but even though I don't care much for the RPG elements, the fact there are only 2 vital skillchecks, hardly ever an option of de-escalating a situation through diplomancy, and every door can be opened regardless of lockpick or science level because there's always a keycard in the exact same room, is just stupid.
The game looks awful, everything looks like polished plastic and the textures are muddy as hell, all the menus are just Fallout 3 reskins. Hair is one solid piece and facial expressions are incredibly robotic with lips often not syncing up to what's being said. The only positive graphical element is the particles, fire doesn't look great but the effect off lazers and plasma looks cool. Enemies are also balanced in a weird way, your most powerful weapon can usually take down a raider in a shot or two but then you come up against a raider that duct-taped a bit of piping to his chest and suddenly it takes 10 grenades and 4 magazines to take him down. The animations aren't exactly stellar either, everything from reloading to the cutscenes just don't look right.
The world is pretty boring, no interesting vaults to explore or unique areas. The best it gets is when you're in the middle of Boston, a few floors up looking out over the world and fighting enemies on the impromptu balconies of half destroyed buildings but even that's locked behind a few loading screens to get there. There isn't much point in exploring to begin with either considering you can just build stupidly powerful guns and that ammo never runs out if you follow the main plot.
The story isn't great, it's better than 3's which isn't exactly hard to do. You do reach a point where you're on the best of terms with each faction and they're all willing to help you out but it's made abundantly clear that after a specific point you have to side with one, it doesn't really make much sense to go beyond that point if you don't care about the story since you can jump between the factions and take as much help from them as you need.
The crafting system is okay, however the grind to find the smallest materials starts to outweight the enjoyment of building up a settlement rather quickly. I found the best way to enjoy it was to just cheat and give myself a stupid amount of building materials, although once you make your comfy settlement there isn't a whole lot to do with it, atleast nothing worth more than a curious glance over.
The game isn't very well optimised either, which is strange considering this game feels like what Fallout 3 should have been over 8 years ago, even stranger when you consider it's running on basically the same god awful engine. It runs well inside buildings but as soon as you step outside you can expect a ridiculous FPS drop. That's unless you fiddle with the settings to the point where the graphics suffer just so you can play the game at a bareable framerate in specific areas, despite it being fine in others.
Also shoutout to Todd's greed for raising the price of the season pass just to cash in on the idiots who'd buy it knowing it was going up in price purely because it was "cheaper".
Don't buy this game. Even mods can't save it.
Fresh install gets stuck on the main menu loading screen indefinitely.
This is more of an FPS than an RPG, which is something I wanted from Fallout 4, but even though I don't care much for the RPG elements, the fact there are only 2 vital skillchecks, hardly ever an option of de-escalating a situation through diplomancy, and every door can be opened regardless of lockpick or science level because there's always a keycard in the exact same room, is just stupid.
The game looks awful, everything looks like polished plastic and the textures are muddy as hell, all the menus are just Fallout 3 reskins. Hair is one solid piece and facial expressions are incredibly robotic with lips often not syncing up to what's being said. The only positive graphical element is the particles, fire doesn't look great but the effect off lazers and plasma looks cool. Enemies are also balanced in a weird way, your most powerful weapon can usually take down a raider in a shot or two but then you come up against a raider that duct-taped a bit of piping to his chest and suddenly it takes 10 grenades and 4 magazines to take him down. The animations aren't exactly stellar either, everything from reloading to the cutscenes just don't look right.
The world is pretty boring, no interesting vaults to explore or unique areas. The best it gets is when you're in the middle of Boston, a few floors up looking out over the world and fighting enemies on the impromptu balconies of half destroyed buildings but even that's locked behind a few loading screens to get there. There isn't much point in exploring to begin with either considering you can just build stupidly powerful guns and that ammo never runs out if you follow the main plot.
The story isn't great, it's better than 3's which isn't exactly hard to do. You do reach a point where you're on the best of terms with each faction and they're all willing to help you out but it's made abundantly clear that after a specific point you have to side with one, it doesn't really make much sense to go beyond that point if you don't care about the story since you can jump between the factions and take as much help from them as you need.
The crafting system is okay, however the grind to find the smallest materials starts to outweight the enjoyment of building up a settlement rather quickly. I found the best way to enjoy it was to just cheat and give myself a stupid amount of building materials, although once you make your comfy settlement there isn't a whole lot to do with it, atleast nothing worth more than a curious glance over.
The game isn't very well optimised either, which is strange considering this game feels like what Fallout 3 should have been over 8 years ago, even stranger when you consider it's running on basically the same god awful engine. It runs well inside buildings but as soon as you step outside you can expect a ridiculous FPS drop. That's unless you fiddle with the settings to the point where the graphics suffer just so you can play the game at a bareable framerate in specific areas, despite it being fine in others.
Also shoutout to Todd's greed for raising the price of the season pass just to cash in on the idiots who'd buy it knowing it was going up in price purely because it was "cheaper".
Don't buy this game. Even mods can't save it.
It's amazing to see a non-emulated Ratchet and Clank game on PC, I can only hope they bring the older games over too.
The main thing to know is that this is a decent port, it's optimized well and looks fantastic, DLSS is a key component of this but even if you can't use DLSS the AMD and Insomniac options are both worthwhile alternatives as far as I can tell. I encounter one reoccurring issue however which would lead to softlocks - sometimes if you move too quickly (like in the rail/speedle sections) you can go faster than the game can load (maybe depending on your SSD set up) and end up in areas where geometry hasn't loaded and you can't progress, this happened twice and required a manual restart of the game and each time.
This is my first time playing Rift Apart and it's a fun R&C game, it hits all the usual notes you expect though it seems to be less tongue-in-cheek than the originals that I recall from the PS2, the humour is a little safer and the supporting cast are far less present in this entry, but it might be a side effect of having 4 protagonists. The story to me isn't as interesting as the early games and the boss fights feel particularly weak, but they aren't bad at all, just not a series highlight.
Rift Apart leans into the ridiculous weapons the series is known for, there are some stand out weapons here like Mr. Fungi, Buzzblades, etc. but the upgrade-system is very bad, if you dump all of your raritanium shards into the blaster (like most players will do early on as it's your first gun) then pretty quickly your blaster is by far and away the best gun in your arsenal, meaning it's a choice made out of a need for variety to use most other weapons. I would forget I even have upgrade options for a while and come back to 50+ raritanium then just dump them into whatever guns I used most without reading the upgrade details.
To be straight forward, most of my enjoyment here comes from my nostalgia associated with R&C, and Rift Apart is a solid shooter/platformer, it feels familiar and never leans too hard into pandering to the nostalgia, but at the same time it doesn't feel like it does anything particularly new either. The rift transitions are cool the first few times but the gameplay doesn't change much from the first hour to the last hour, just more of the same, even the planets don't feel as varied as the older games.
With all that said, I have enjoyed this game, I'll probably do a second playthrough to get all of the achievements and I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed R&C in the past to give it a try.
The main thing to know is that this is a decent port, it's optimized well and looks fantastic, DLSS is a key component of this but even if you can't use DLSS the AMD and Insomniac options are both worthwhile alternatives as far as I can tell. I encounter one reoccurring issue however which would lead to softlocks - sometimes if you move too quickly (like in the rail/speedle sections) you can go faster than the game can load (maybe depending on your SSD set up) and end up in areas where geometry hasn't loaded and you can't progress, this happened twice and required a manual restart of the game and each time.
This is my first time playing Rift Apart and it's a fun R&C game, it hits all the usual notes you expect though it seems to be less tongue-in-cheek than the originals that I recall from the PS2, the humour is a little safer and the supporting cast are far less present in this entry, but it might be a side effect of having 4 protagonists. The story to me isn't as interesting as the early games and the boss fights feel particularly weak, but they aren't bad at all, just not a series highlight.
Rift Apart leans into the ridiculous weapons the series is known for, there are some stand out weapons here like Mr. Fungi, Buzzblades, etc. but the upgrade-system is very bad, if you dump all of your raritanium shards into the blaster (like most players will do early on as it's your first gun) then pretty quickly your blaster is by far and away the best gun in your arsenal, meaning it's a choice made out of a need for variety to use most other weapons. I would forget I even have upgrade options for a while and come back to 50+ raritanium then just dump them into whatever guns I used most without reading the upgrade details.
To be straight forward, most of my enjoyment here comes from my nostalgia associated with R&C, and Rift Apart is a solid shooter/platformer, it feels familiar and never leans too hard into pandering to the nostalgia, but at the same time it doesn't feel like it does anything particularly new either. The rift transitions are cool the first few times but the gameplay doesn't change much from the first hour to the last hour, just more of the same, even the planets don't feel as varied as the older games.
With all that said, I have enjoyed this game, I'll probably do a second playthrough to get all of the achievements and I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed R&C in the past to give it a try.
2019
This game killed Titanfall so I'll never forgive it.
More than that, I never got the hype, it feels very boring to play, the TTK is probably the longest of any FPS out there so fights just become mag-dumps followed by spamming shields and the winner is usually determined by team size/ammo capacity rather than actual skill. The abilities make it worse too.
More than that, I never got the hype, it feels very boring to play, the TTK is probably the longest of any FPS out there so fights just become mag-dumps followed by spamming shields and the winner is usually determined by team size/ammo capacity rather than actual skill. The abilities make it worse too.
It's F2P MTG and it's a pretty good version of it. It lacks key features that older clients had years ago and isn't the most stable but the mechanics are well implemented and it's not at all Pay-to-win, atleast no more pay-to-win than real MTG, you earn coins to buy packs at a pretty quick rate and there's plenty of promo codes online to get free unlocks, I've not spent a single cent on this game but have several decks I enjoy running.
I'd really recommend this for new players to MTG as the tutorial is decent but regular play gets you used to the rules of each card since you don't have to doubt whether something is a legal move or not, if the card is highlighted then you can use it and the game will explain how, it's probably the fastest way to learn MTG.
There are two issues that annoy me about this though:
1. Time-outs; I play decks that the community as a whole tend to hate, mostly mill (because I don't care what you think it's fun) and this can frustrate people, so instead of accepting a loss and forfeiting or playing on, people will run down their timer until the end of the game. The timers are way too generous and there's nothing stopping a player from letting it run to a sliver left then proceeding with no punishment. They need to allow for a single time-out and they need to force it to start sooner in my opinion.
2. The meta. White lifegain decks are the most annoying decks to play against because they rely on synergies and stacks, more often than not upwards of 20+ synergies can be initiated in a turn that turn into one big feedback loop. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact players need to press the proceed button for each step. I've had games last 60+ minutes because I'm fighting lifegain where the opponent needs to confirm up to 100+ abilities in their step with no way to speed it up. What's especially annoying is that the default white deck encourages this kind of playstyle that grinds the game to a stop and sucks all the fun out. Lifegain is fine albeit predictable and boring, wasting everyone's time isn't. The same thing applies to any deck that swarms you with ability confirms but white lifegain by far is the most common.
I also wish that WOTC would include more deck codes with their products so you could transfer your physical cards into Arena, I've had one MTG product in the past with this and it was fantastic but knowing WOTC they wouldn't bother making this standard across their products.
I'd really recommend this for new players to MTG as the tutorial is decent but regular play gets you used to the rules of each card since you don't have to doubt whether something is a legal move or not, if the card is highlighted then you can use it and the game will explain how, it's probably the fastest way to learn MTG.
There are two issues that annoy me about this though:
1. Time-outs; I play decks that the community as a whole tend to hate, mostly mill (because I don't care what you think it's fun) and this can frustrate people, so instead of accepting a loss and forfeiting or playing on, people will run down their timer until the end of the game. The timers are way too generous and there's nothing stopping a player from letting it run to a sliver left then proceeding with no punishment. They need to allow for a single time-out and they need to force it to start sooner in my opinion.
2. The meta. White lifegain decks are the most annoying decks to play against because they rely on synergies and stacks, more often than not upwards of 20+ synergies can be initiated in a turn that turn into one big feedback loop. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact players need to press the proceed button for each step. I've had games last 60+ minutes because I'm fighting lifegain where the opponent needs to confirm up to 100+ abilities in their step with no way to speed it up. What's especially annoying is that the default white deck encourages this kind of playstyle that grinds the game to a stop and sucks all the fun out. Lifegain is fine albeit predictable and boring, wasting everyone's time isn't. The same thing applies to any deck that swarms you with ability confirms but white lifegain by far is the most common.
I also wish that WOTC would include more deck codes with their products so you could transfer your physical cards into Arena, I've had one MTG product in the past with this and it was fantastic but knowing WOTC they wouldn't bother making this standard across their products.
2020
Playing RE3 for the first time I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I am not a big RE fan and only started with 7, also playing Village and RE2 Remake before this but I feel like this is a fantastic experience.
I understand the reputation it has and the inherent shortcomings of remastering a game that was never officially meant to be a numbered-sequel, while also stripping content from it, but something about this experience feels very tight.
RE2 has an incredible amount of depth, which is lacking here, this feels far more on rails and straight-forward. I rarely had moments where I found myself stuck for items or wondering where to go. The game is just set-piece after set-piece but oddly it works for me. I find the areas of central RC, the substation, the hospital, NEST 2, all to be visually more interesting than the sewers and police station of RE2. Nemesis isn't all that scary but he works to keep things moving and I enjoyed always being under pressure from him, moreso than Mr. X in RE2.
My first playthrough took about 4.5 hours on standard difficulty and there aren't any alternative scenarios here so I can see why people who purchased this at launch weren't happy but for €10 I feel like I got my money's worth.
I understand the reputation it has and the inherent shortcomings of remastering a game that was never officially meant to be a numbered-sequel, while also stripping content from it, but something about this experience feels very tight.
RE2 has an incredible amount of depth, which is lacking here, this feels far more on rails and straight-forward. I rarely had moments where I found myself stuck for items or wondering where to go. The game is just set-piece after set-piece but oddly it works for me. I find the areas of central RC, the substation, the hospital, NEST 2, all to be visually more interesting than the sewers and police station of RE2. Nemesis isn't all that scary but he works to keep things moving and I enjoyed always being under pressure from him, moreso than Mr. X in RE2.
My first playthrough took about 4.5 hours on standard difficulty and there aren't any alternative scenarios here so I can see why people who purchased this at launch weren't happy but for €10 I feel like I got my money's worth.
2018
Sea of Thieves is a really strange game I've been struggling to understand.
The game is incredibly simple in almost every single way. Combat involves one of three guns and a sword that has a swing and block function. There's extras such as throwables but at its core it is shoot first or swing first to win. There's no stats to level up, there are no better guns or swords to get; what this means is that someone with 10 minutes of playtime can go up against someone with 1,000 hours of playtime and stand a fair chance of winning, everything is completely balanced across the board. Larger crews have a distinct advantage of being able to man more cannons at once, repair faster, split up tasks, etc. but a skilled two man crew can hold their own in the more agile sloops assuming they have the coordination and supplies to outlast larger crews.
The lack of stats/levelling system for your player also means there are no significant rewards. Everything you work for in this game is cosmetic, new paint jobs for your ship, different looking swords and guns, tattoos, decorated cannons, clothing, etc. If this doesn't sound rewarding enough for you then you may not enjoy the game. That being said most of the fun I have had has come from my experience in the game and not from the rewards earned.
The gameplay loop involves completing missions for factions and levelling them up, some factions ask you to fight AI enemies, one wants you to find hidden treasure, another asks you to engage in PvP, etc. There's a nice variety of ways to grind out the game. If you're cautious you can essentially ignore all other players and do your own thing, however by the nature of the game you will inevitably run into other players. A majority of players seem to avoid confrontation, however those that don't wont be shy about engaging you from the second they spot you, regardless if you have any loot or not. You may have spent two hours completing a quest with your ship now stocked up with chests but you can lose it all to a crew that just logged on. This can be very frustrating if you do missions that require a large amount of effort such as the events, however this is exactly what makes the game unique and keeps you on alert.
The game in general is quite easy but there are strange difficulty spikes here and there. In particular the red-tornado event asks you to take down a skeleton captain who has multiple phases, the first two phases are fine but the third phase gives the enemy 8,000hp and the ability to rain down fireballs from the sky. You'll need to use cannons on your ship to inflict a steady amount of damage but if the fireballs hit your ship you'll be stuck in a loop of putting out fires, repairing and by the time that is done it will get hit by them again. Larger crews won't encounter this problem but as a two man crew it feels unfair.
The community is a mixed bag, as mentioned plenty of players will avoid conflict but like most multiplayer games you'll run into players who have the single aim of trying to ruin your experience. The worst example of this was when a 4 man crew sunk our newly spawned sloop and kept spawnkilling us over and over by camping the tavern. There was no point to this as we had just logged in and had no loot for them to take. We had to scuttle the ship and respawn in a new area of the map. No big deal but a waste of 15 minutes. So far we have had a few very positive encounters, including max level pirates who gave us late game missions to earn easy loot and players who just want to sing sea shanties alongside us.
I have to say that I sincerely dislike PvP in this game though. Any crew that is of a larger size than yours is at a distinct advantage. Ship combat is rarely about who goes down first, it's about who boards first and spawncamps or who runs out of resources first. It feels like a complete and utter waste of time getting into PvP in this. I have had sessions ended because I've been pursued for 20 minutes, got bored and just didn't want to play anymore, the flow of the game just grinds to a halt and I wish there were PvE servers. I get why people think this opinion is wrong but it's not fun encountering other players in a PvP scenario.
There definitely feels like there is a lot of untapped potential in SoT, it's got a fantastic foundation and I hope Rare continues updating it, we've recently gotten the first seasonal update with the most generous season-pass I've ever seen along with the addition of pirate trials that added more content to the game and fleshes out the lore. Around the world there are journals, messages in bottles, named characters, etc. however you're never encouraged to look deeper into this. The game has a real problem with explaining things to player; emissaries play a huge role but I had to learn the ins and out from asking other pirates, I had to look up how to find ashen keys or how to break red mermaid statues.
It wasn't until we started doing higher reward missions that involved carrying 10+ chests, several bounty skulls, crates of tea and silk and an armoury worth of gunpowder from one side of the map to the other that it clicked with me how fun this game can be. The stress of having to coordinate with your crew to avoid conflict or win ship battles is extremely fun and taking 10 minutes to unload every piece of loot is a nice visual indicator of how hard you worked during that mission.
On a final note, it's quite a charming game. My early hours with it included just playing shanties on different instruments, getting drunk until vomiting while playing shanties, launching myself out of cannons, fishing, etc. Little things like that really draw you in and create some memorable moments.
I'd highly recommend SoT, it is at the very least worth trying even if you think it might not be for you, I was very pleasantly surprised. I can't imagine it would be very fun solo however, bring atleast one other person.
Edit 05/09/2021:
It has been interesting to watch this game develop, I can safely this is a game where the devs really care about it. There is a serious level of passion in the updates and their efforts with the community and that alone is worth suggesting the game for.
The Pirates Life update has shown however that the game itself is pretty average in every way possible, having played for a while now I can safely say the following:
- Combat is boring
- Sailing is okay at best
- Factions are bland
- Items aren't varied
- There isn't a whole lot to do in the world
And in a vacuum these are all bad things, however when coupled together in an open world where player interaction is entirely random it leads to some of the most fun you can have. The whole thing starts to unravel with structured, linear missions however, while I appreciate the efforts to try something new this game is made to be a player driven experience and I am excited to see where to go with it.
The game is incredibly simple in almost every single way. Combat involves one of three guns and a sword that has a swing and block function. There's extras such as throwables but at its core it is shoot first or swing first to win. There's no stats to level up, there are no better guns or swords to get; what this means is that someone with 10 minutes of playtime can go up against someone with 1,000 hours of playtime and stand a fair chance of winning, everything is completely balanced across the board. Larger crews have a distinct advantage of being able to man more cannons at once, repair faster, split up tasks, etc. but a skilled two man crew can hold their own in the more agile sloops assuming they have the coordination and supplies to outlast larger crews.
The lack of stats/levelling system for your player also means there are no significant rewards. Everything you work for in this game is cosmetic, new paint jobs for your ship, different looking swords and guns, tattoos, decorated cannons, clothing, etc. If this doesn't sound rewarding enough for you then you may not enjoy the game. That being said most of the fun I have had has come from my experience in the game and not from the rewards earned.
The gameplay loop involves completing missions for factions and levelling them up, some factions ask you to fight AI enemies, one wants you to find hidden treasure, another asks you to engage in PvP, etc. There's a nice variety of ways to grind out the game. If you're cautious you can essentially ignore all other players and do your own thing, however by the nature of the game you will inevitably run into other players. A majority of players seem to avoid confrontation, however those that don't wont be shy about engaging you from the second they spot you, regardless if you have any loot or not. You may have spent two hours completing a quest with your ship now stocked up with chests but you can lose it all to a crew that just logged on. This can be very frustrating if you do missions that require a large amount of effort such as the events, however this is exactly what makes the game unique and keeps you on alert.
The game in general is quite easy but there are strange difficulty spikes here and there. In particular the red-tornado event asks you to take down a skeleton captain who has multiple phases, the first two phases are fine but the third phase gives the enemy 8,000hp and the ability to rain down fireballs from the sky. You'll need to use cannons on your ship to inflict a steady amount of damage but if the fireballs hit your ship you'll be stuck in a loop of putting out fires, repairing and by the time that is done it will get hit by them again. Larger crews won't encounter this problem but as a two man crew it feels unfair.
The community is a mixed bag, as mentioned plenty of players will avoid conflict but like most multiplayer games you'll run into players who have the single aim of trying to ruin your experience. The worst example of this was when a 4 man crew sunk our newly spawned sloop and kept spawnkilling us over and over by camping the tavern. There was no point to this as we had just logged in and had no loot for them to take. We had to scuttle the ship and respawn in a new area of the map. No big deal but a waste of 15 minutes. So far we have had a few very positive encounters, including max level pirates who gave us late game missions to earn easy loot and players who just want to sing sea shanties alongside us.
I have to say that I sincerely dislike PvP in this game though. Any crew that is of a larger size than yours is at a distinct advantage. Ship combat is rarely about who goes down first, it's about who boards first and spawncamps or who runs out of resources first. It feels like a complete and utter waste of time getting into PvP in this. I have had sessions ended because I've been pursued for 20 minutes, got bored and just didn't want to play anymore, the flow of the game just grinds to a halt and I wish there were PvE servers. I get why people think this opinion is wrong but it's not fun encountering other players in a PvP scenario.
There definitely feels like there is a lot of untapped potential in SoT, it's got a fantastic foundation and I hope Rare continues updating it, we've recently gotten the first seasonal update with the most generous season-pass I've ever seen along with the addition of pirate trials that added more content to the game and fleshes out the lore. Around the world there are journals, messages in bottles, named characters, etc. however you're never encouraged to look deeper into this. The game has a real problem with explaining things to player; emissaries play a huge role but I had to learn the ins and out from asking other pirates, I had to look up how to find ashen keys or how to break red mermaid statues.
It wasn't until we started doing higher reward missions that involved carrying 10+ chests, several bounty skulls, crates of tea and silk and an armoury worth of gunpowder from one side of the map to the other that it clicked with me how fun this game can be. The stress of having to coordinate with your crew to avoid conflict or win ship battles is extremely fun and taking 10 minutes to unload every piece of loot is a nice visual indicator of how hard you worked during that mission.
On a final note, it's quite a charming game. My early hours with it included just playing shanties on different instruments, getting drunk until vomiting while playing shanties, launching myself out of cannons, fishing, etc. Little things like that really draw you in and create some memorable moments.
I'd highly recommend SoT, it is at the very least worth trying even if you think it might not be for you, I was very pleasantly surprised. I can't imagine it would be very fun solo however, bring atleast one other person.
Edit 05/09/2021:
It has been interesting to watch this game develop, I can safely this is a game where the devs really care about it. There is a serious level of passion in the updates and their efforts with the community and that alone is worth suggesting the game for.
The Pirates Life update has shown however that the game itself is pretty average in every way possible, having played for a while now I can safely say the following:
- Combat is boring
- Sailing is okay at best
- Factions are bland
- Items aren't varied
- There isn't a whole lot to do in the world
And in a vacuum these are all bad things, however when coupled together in an open world where player interaction is entirely random it leads to some of the most fun you can have. The whole thing starts to unravel with structured, linear missions however, while I appreciate the efforts to try something new this game is made to be a player driven experience and I am excited to see where to go with it.
2016
At its core Titanfall 2 is a great game, however it has been let down by the publisher, the developer and the community. On launch I loved it, the MP is fun but doesn't provide much reason to play for more than 50/60 hours.
Respawn abandoned this game to hackers, it's a wild story but a tiny group of people were taking the servers out and hacking this game, for nearly two years it was basically unplayable and Respawn didn't care, Apex Legends became all they cared about. It was eventually fixed but it felt like too little too late.
EA had it out for this series since the start, Titanfall 1 and 2 both released right between bigger franchises and suffered in sales as a result, affecting EA's own willingness to continue support.
Finally, I believe the community really plays a role in why this game isn't as popular. Titanfall 1 got absolutely lambasted at launch for having no single player campaign, it was ridiculed and dismissed, only years later after support was already gone did people go back and appreciate it. Titanfall 2 meanwhile has a good campaign included, which is nice, however you'd swear it was the second coming of Christ with how much people love it. If I have to read another "a real hidden gem", "underrated campaign" comment I will go insane. It's fun, it's fine, it's nothing special.
Nowadays this game is occupied mostly by a small group of players dedicated to it which means you run into the same 50 or so people, many of whom are incredibly skilled no doubt, but if you're a casual or new player you'll be turned off by the level sweat. Custom server clients exist, but the problem is exacerbated 10x there, and many servers have ridiculous rule sets like banning entire weapon categories, titans, grenades, etc. basically no fun allowed.
Respawn abandoned this game to hackers, it's a wild story but a tiny group of people were taking the servers out and hacking this game, for nearly two years it was basically unplayable and Respawn didn't care, Apex Legends became all they cared about. It was eventually fixed but it felt like too little too late.
EA had it out for this series since the start, Titanfall 1 and 2 both released right between bigger franchises and suffered in sales as a result, affecting EA's own willingness to continue support.
Finally, I believe the community really plays a role in why this game isn't as popular. Titanfall 1 got absolutely lambasted at launch for having no single player campaign, it was ridiculed and dismissed, only years later after support was already gone did people go back and appreciate it. Titanfall 2 meanwhile has a good campaign included, which is nice, however you'd swear it was the second coming of Christ with how much people love it. If I have to read another "a real hidden gem", "underrated campaign" comment I will go insane. It's fun, it's fine, it's nothing special.
Nowadays this game is occupied mostly by a small group of players dedicated to it which means you run into the same 50 or so people, many of whom are incredibly skilled no doubt, but if you're a casual or new player you'll be turned off by the level sweat. Custom server clients exist, but the problem is exacerbated 10x there, and many servers have ridiculous rule sets like banning entire weapon categories, titans, grenades, etc. basically no fun allowed.
2021
I'm not a Battlefield fan, I have played several hundred hours across numerous entries and I've had fun with the series, though I've always found it inferior to other multiplayer FPS games. So, when 2042 dropped and was devastatingly terrible I enjoyed watching it being torn apart for the soulless game it was, a rushed project built from the remnants of a failed battle royale.
Years later after many patches I picked it up for €10 and I have to say there is fun to be found here. In a vacuum, this is a competent, large scale, MP shooter, with some OK ideas. If you forget it's a Battlefield game there isn't much wrong with it really, apart from the tiny map pool and some jank.
However, as soon as you compare it to BF1 or BF4 the flaws are immediate. This game has basically no destruction. The weapons are all incredibly inconsistent (LMGs do everything SMGs and Rifles do but better and with more ammo), the hero abilities range from utterly useless to "this should have been a weapon for all classes".
The biggest wasted potential here is Battlefield Portal. This could have been amazing. In my opinion, if they released Portal for €20/€30 as its own standalone game it would have done better than 2042. Nowadays though, it's dead, it's just used for XP farming and nothing else, good luck finding an actual playable server.
Grab it cheap, you'll get 30/40 hours of mindless fun out of it.
Years later after many patches I picked it up for €10 and I have to say there is fun to be found here. In a vacuum, this is a competent, large scale, MP shooter, with some OK ideas. If you forget it's a Battlefield game there isn't much wrong with it really, apart from the tiny map pool and some jank.
However, as soon as you compare it to BF1 or BF4 the flaws are immediate. This game has basically no destruction. The weapons are all incredibly inconsistent (LMGs do everything SMGs and Rifles do but better and with more ammo), the hero abilities range from utterly useless to "this should have been a weapon for all classes".
The biggest wasted potential here is Battlefield Portal. This could have been amazing. In my opinion, if they released Portal for €20/€30 as its own standalone game it would have done better than 2042. Nowadays though, it's dead, it's just used for XP farming and nothing else, good luck finding an actual playable server.
Grab it cheap, you'll get 30/40 hours of mindless fun out of it.
2020
I'm definitely in the minority but the Doom remakes just never clicked with me the way they did with others. They have everything I should like in a video game but both 2016 and Eternal failed to hold my interest for more than 5 or 6 hours.
The game looks fantastic, the gore is great, the soundtrack is fantastic. I love the idea of all of it, but in execution it feels like a very outdated gameplay loop, and I get that's kind of the point to some extent.
People love to praise this game as super fast and reactive, but most enemies that don't charge right at you barely move from within a 2 meter radius. The gameplay comes to a grinding halt every time you need ammo as you need to perform a specific kill animation that locks you in place for 2-5 seconds. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact you need to do it very frequently. The animations are well done but you get sick of looking at them very fast.
The narrative here is also extremely off-putting. Drop me in, tell me there are demons on Earth and let me go hog-wild. I don't care about this prophecy stuff, or there being specific antagonists, or a fight between good and evil. All of it just makes me roll my eyes when I think of how hard this game seems to be taking itself seriously.
It's not at all a bad game, it's got praise for a reason, I just personally don't get it.
The game looks fantastic, the gore is great, the soundtrack is fantastic. I love the idea of all of it, but in execution it feels like a very outdated gameplay loop, and I get that's kind of the point to some extent.
People love to praise this game as super fast and reactive, but most enemies that don't charge right at you barely move from within a 2 meter radius. The gameplay comes to a grinding halt every time you need ammo as you need to perform a specific kill animation that locks you in place for 2-5 seconds. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact you need to do it very frequently. The animations are well done but you get sick of looking at them very fast.
The narrative here is also extremely off-putting. Drop me in, tell me there are demons on Earth and let me go hog-wild. I don't care about this prophecy stuff, or there being specific antagonists, or a fight between good and evil. All of it just makes me roll my eyes when I think of how hard this game seems to be taking itself seriously.
It's not at all a bad game, it's got praise for a reason, I just personally don't get it.
2020
I am going to go against the grain here and say that this game has one of the most reasonable price models I've seen in a very long time. I know it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to a game that was once a buy-to-own product switching to a subscription/F2P model but hear me out.
The game is fantastic, it hits all the notes you want in a Trackmania game, if you've never played TM before then try it, if you have played TM before you'll probably enjoy it. My only real gripe with the game is I wish loading times were shorter, server queues were shorter and there was less downtime. In older games it felt like you could hop in and out of races much faster.
The biggest problem Nadeo had with TM was that they gave the community the tools to make an infinite amount of content, why would you ever buy any other TM related content when the community maps can keep the game alive indefinitely? This led to a FIFA/Cod style release plan of new game ever year or two to keep revenue up and unfortunately, also split the playerbase. Remember playing Canyon or Lagoon? Yeah, me neither, barely.
Instead, here you have a F2P offering that is very generous in what it gives to free players, thousands of maps for free, access to thousands more community maps, Royal mode, Ranked, the map editor, etc. €10/year is enough to give you 100% of the content you need to enjoy the game, anything over that is extra support for the Devs basically. What I really appreciate is that it doesn't use the same microtransaction techniques that full €70 games use, no "buy this skin now or it's gone", no sunsetting of content, no bundles, no map packs, etc.
Instead, Nadeo curate entire campaigns every 3 months, pick community made maps for daily tracks and championships and seem to genuinely engage with the community they have fostered. Best of all they don't split the community across several games anymore.
For the price of Trackmania Stadium, Canyon and Lagoon, you get 3 years of access to an insane amount of content with ongoing support for the next several years. For the price of nothing, you still get access to most of it. Unfortunately the studio still needs to make money to keep the game alive but this is the best possible way they could have done it. Oh, and if you stop paying for the subscription you get the keep all the content you received up to that point, which sounds like it's not a big deal but think how many devs would be happy to take it away from you if given the chance
The game is fantastic, it hits all the notes you want in a Trackmania game, if you've never played TM before then try it, if you have played TM before you'll probably enjoy it. My only real gripe with the game is I wish loading times were shorter, server queues were shorter and there was less downtime. In older games it felt like you could hop in and out of races much faster.
The biggest problem Nadeo had with TM was that they gave the community the tools to make an infinite amount of content, why would you ever buy any other TM related content when the community maps can keep the game alive indefinitely? This led to a FIFA/Cod style release plan of new game ever year or two to keep revenue up and unfortunately, also split the playerbase. Remember playing Canyon or Lagoon? Yeah, me neither, barely.
Instead, here you have a F2P offering that is very generous in what it gives to free players, thousands of maps for free, access to thousands more community maps, Royal mode, Ranked, the map editor, etc. €10/year is enough to give you 100% of the content you need to enjoy the game, anything over that is extra support for the Devs basically. What I really appreciate is that it doesn't use the same microtransaction techniques that full €70 games use, no "buy this skin now or it's gone", no sunsetting of content, no bundles, no map packs, etc.
Instead, Nadeo curate entire campaigns every 3 months, pick community made maps for daily tracks and championships and seem to genuinely engage with the community they have fostered. Best of all they don't split the community across several games anymore.
For the price of Trackmania Stadium, Canyon and Lagoon, you get 3 years of access to an insane amount of content with ongoing support for the next several years. For the price of nothing, you still get access to most of it. Unfortunately the studio still needs to make money to keep the game alive but this is the best possible way they could have done it. Oh, and if you stop paying for the subscription you get the keep all the content you received up to that point, which sounds like it's not a big deal but think how many devs would be happy to take it away from you if given the chance
As of June 2024 I have almost 500 hours in MWII, below is my Steam review which includes edits from when I first began playing. TLDR, single player is bad, MP is fun when SBMM isn't ruining it. Ground War offers a better large scale experience than Battlefield has done in years.
Edit: 14/12/23 I have played a lot of MWIII through free weekends and early betas (for a preorder I cancelled). I feel I am going insane, the community loves MWIII compared to MWII but it's objectively a god-awful game. It's like they took the MWII code and just said "let's alter enough to be slightly worse". Everything about it is awful, the only good parts are the maps and they are from 2009. The TTK is horrid. The weapons are a clear step down. The UI is atrocious, somehow worse than MWII. It's all so terrible.
Edit: With the announcement of MWIII, I think it's fair to say I enjoyed this iteration of CoD a lot. Way more than 2019. It has issues, and if you listen to the vocal minority of the community you'd swear this game is somehow worse than Black Ops 4, it's not, it does a lot of things really well and the core gameplay is absolutely fantastic. IW has handled updates and content poorly, the perk system isn't good, the focus on Warzone is annoying. With all that said, it's by far and away my most played game of 2023 and for good reason. TL:DR is that single player is bad but MP is a tonne of fun if you can look last monetisation. Ground War here is a better version of what Battlefield would offer. Core MP is great fun when SBMM isn't ruining it.
edit: after 120 hours I can firmly say this is one of my favourite iterations of COD. Ignore the community, it's so large and never knows what it wants. MW2 is fun when everything is working as it should and so far that's more often than MW19. It's missing lots of content and IW are recycling old content/witholding content that is ready just for seasonal updates but apart from that I love this game. Here is hoping updates don't ruin it. Warzone/DMZ is getting all of the attention as is to be expected but MP remains working.
Warzone will forever make me feel like an old man who just doesn't get it. All of CoD's mechanics work in a fast paced MP with quick respawns but I don't see the fun in:
- Waiting 3 mins to get into a game
- 30 seconds to load in and land
- either die in 10 seconds or spend the next 30 mins hiding
- die to a sniper 100m away
- wait for 3 mins in the gulag for a match
- lose in a boring pistol only gun fight or respawn and do it all again
I don't see any fun to be had in this, it genuinely baffles me how people play this more than MP.
Guess I've been lucky to have no crashes in MP or SP, Warzone can crash occasionally but I never play it so it doesn't bother me.
Preseason opinion is that it's fun, there's a lot of good changes that have been made including the removal of bunnyhopping and slide cancelling. I also firmly believe that removing the red dots from the map when firing should have been in place as originally planned in MW19 and I am very glad it's here to stay in this iteration. The maps are solid (even THAT one, it's fun even if it's unbalanced), the equipment is more varied than MW19 with shock sticks and drill charges being amazing additions. Pistols are more powerful than ever and that's amazing, in MW19 you just took overkill and ignored pistols but here they feel viable even outside of hardcore.
Speaking of, there is no hardcore mode and there won't be until November 16. There's no gun game, no infection, no 24/7 map playlist, the weapon progression is completely whack, the UI is trash and I don't know who decided that perks should be wrapped up in packages and made needlessly annoying to set up. A lot of content is missing and a lot of changes have felt unnessecary. The starting guns are also garbage, even the M4 which tends to always be OP. This is made worse by the fact that in its current state there are no worthwhile attachments, literally none, the meta is to keep ADS up with 0 attachments, so you're gonna be grinding for a while before you get anything fun.
As always SBMM ruins the fun you can have with this game - I recommend swapping playlists, going between domination/TDM/invasion/one life modes, etc. to try and break it up. If you have one or two games where you do too well expect to hate the game for the next 5/6 matches.
The campaign is a mixed bag but a nice twist on things from the 2009 game, the missions are shorter than expected but full of the set pieces you expect. It's a stupid, action, military movie where you click heads essentially and I like that, you turn your brain off for 5/6 hours. I will say however this campaign has a lot of missions that suck even for CoD, the convoy mission, "alone" and the tank boss fight are all really boring and really badly done.
Performance-wise this is much better than MW19, that game ran fine for me at the start but after the first update I got constant CTDs, hard crashes, random disconnects, etc. MW2 has been flawless for me on a 1660 Super/Ryzen 1600 @ 1440p, high settings, solid 60fps+ at all times with only one crash so far.
This game isn't worth 70 quid if you're on the fence and even if you love COD this game is not worth 70 quid, it's an update to MW19 but if you're like me and feel like there's very little that competes with the MW grind, frustrations and all, you have probably already bought this. If you never played MW19 then it would be good to get at a discount.
No doubt in 6 months time the game will be unrecognizable from now, I can only hope the separation of Warzone and MW2 remains in place because IW abandoned MW19 and left it in a horrible state.
Edit: 14/12/23 I have played a lot of MWIII through free weekends and early betas (for a preorder I cancelled). I feel I am going insane, the community loves MWIII compared to MWII but it's objectively a god-awful game. It's like they took the MWII code and just said "let's alter enough to be slightly worse". Everything about it is awful, the only good parts are the maps and they are from 2009. The TTK is horrid. The weapons are a clear step down. The UI is atrocious, somehow worse than MWII. It's all so terrible.
Edit: With the announcement of MWIII, I think it's fair to say I enjoyed this iteration of CoD a lot. Way more than 2019. It has issues, and if you listen to the vocal minority of the community you'd swear this game is somehow worse than Black Ops 4, it's not, it does a lot of things really well and the core gameplay is absolutely fantastic. IW has handled updates and content poorly, the perk system isn't good, the focus on Warzone is annoying. With all that said, it's by far and away my most played game of 2023 and for good reason. TL:DR is that single player is bad but MP is a tonne of fun if you can look last monetisation. Ground War here is a better version of what Battlefield would offer. Core MP is great fun when SBMM isn't ruining it.
edit: after 120 hours I can firmly say this is one of my favourite iterations of COD. Ignore the community, it's so large and never knows what it wants. MW2 is fun when everything is working as it should and so far that's more often than MW19. It's missing lots of content and IW are recycling old content/witholding content that is ready just for seasonal updates but apart from that I love this game. Here is hoping updates don't ruin it. Warzone/DMZ is getting all of the attention as is to be expected but MP remains working.
Warzone will forever make me feel like an old man who just doesn't get it. All of CoD's mechanics work in a fast paced MP with quick respawns but I don't see the fun in:
- Waiting 3 mins to get into a game
- 30 seconds to load in and land
- either die in 10 seconds or spend the next 30 mins hiding
- die to a sniper 100m away
- wait for 3 mins in the gulag for a match
- lose in a boring pistol only gun fight or respawn and do it all again
I don't see any fun to be had in this, it genuinely baffles me how people play this more than MP.
Guess I've been lucky to have no crashes in MP or SP, Warzone can crash occasionally but I never play it so it doesn't bother me.
Preseason opinion is that it's fun, there's a lot of good changes that have been made including the removal of bunnyhopping and slide cancelling. I also firmly believe that removing the red dots from the map when firing should have been in place as originally planned in MW19 and I am very glad it's here to stay in this iteration. The maps are solid (even THAT one, it's fun even if it's unbalanced), the equipment is more varied than MW19 with shock sticks and drill charges being amazing additions. Pistols are more powerful than ever and that's amazing, in MW19 you just took overkill and ignored pistols but here they feel viable even outside of hardcore.
Speaking of, there is no hardcore mode and there won't be until November 16. There's no gun game, no infection, no 24/7 map playlist, the weapon progression is completely whack, the UI is trash and I don't know who decided that perks should be wrapped up in packages and made needlessly annoying to set up. A lot of content is missing and a lot of changes have felt unnessecary. The starting guns are also garbage, even the M4 which tends to always be OP. This is made worse by the fact that in its current state there are no worthwhile attachments, literally none, the meta is to keep ADS up with 0 attachments, so you're gonna be grinding for a while before you get anything fun.
As always SBMM ruins the fun you can have with this game - I recommend swapping playlists, going between domination/TDM/invasion/one life modes, etc. to try and break it up. If you have one or two games where you do too well expect to hate the game for the next 5/6 matches.
The campaign is a mixed bag but a nice twist on things from the 2009 game, the missions are shorter than expected but full of the set pieces you expect. It's a stupid, action, military movie where you click heads essentially and I like that, you turn your brain off for 5/6 hours. I will say however this campaign has a lot of missions that suck even for CoD, the convoy mission, "alone" and the tank boss fight are all really boring and really badly done.
Performance-wise this is much better than MW19, that game ran fine for me at the start but after the first update I got constant CTDs, hard crashes, random disconnects, etc. MW2 has been flawless for me on a 1660 Super/Ryzen 1600 @ 1440p, high settings, solid 60fps+ at all times with only one crash so far.
This game isn't worth 70 quid if you're on the fence and even if you love COD this game is not worth 70 quid, it's an update to MW19 but if you're like me and feel like there's very little that competes with the MW grind, frustrations and all, you have probably already bought this. If you never played MW19 then it would be good to get at a discount.
No doubt in 6 months time the game will be unrecognizable from now, I can only hope the separation of Warzone and MW2 remains in place because IW abandoned MW19 and left it in a horrible state.
2008
bethesda writing lore for obscure characters easily missed on a playthrough: :)
bethesda writing competent lore that doesn't retcon anything or isn't full of plot holes: :(
it's a bad game held together by spit and glue that was very dated even for 2008 however the lore it's working with (thanks interplay) provides good enough reason to deal with all the bad elements of the game, given it's been 15 years you probably know whether or not you like this.
the best way to play is via NV with A Tale of Two Wastelands mod. A recent update means that it no longer needs GFWL which is great but it makes it very hard to mod now.
If you want to enjoy this game to the max go download the save file that skips the prologue and immediately disregard the main plot, just go wandering.
bethesda writing competent lore that doesn't retcon anything or isn't full of plot holes: :(
it's a bad game held together by spit and glue that was very dated even for 2008 however the lore it's working with (thanks interplay) provides good enough reason to deal with all the bad elements of the game, given it's been 15 years you probably know whether or not you like this.
the best way to play is via NV with A Tale of Two Wastelands mod. A recent update means that it no longer needs GFWL which is great but it makes it very hard to mod now.
If you want to enjoy this game to the max go download the save file that skips the prologue and immediately disregard the main plot, just go wandering.
2019
I've never closed the game thinking "wow I had lots of fun" but everytime I close it I immediately think "I can't wait to play this again".
The core loop is really samey and simple, stealth around, avoid noise traps, find clues, kill the boss, extract. The tension comes from knowing other players are doing the same thing and are trying to kill you. You can define your own win-state which makes the game as high-risk as you want it to be; you can try kill one or both bounties then extract, try wipe the server, try grind clues and grunt kills, or specifically hunt players and extract, all of which feels rewarding when you have permadeath characters.
I'm in love with the setting above all else, it's southern gothic in every aspect and while it does have paid cosmetics none of them break from the theme. There are some interesting weapons here too that wouldn't make sense in many other games, most of them have very slow fire rates, woeful iron sights, heavy sway and a steep learning curve. It's not easy to get kills in this game but when you do it feels hard-earned. Sometimes you'll get picked off from 70m away by a sniper without ever knowing where they were, other times you'll get into a 10 minute standoff that has more tension than anything I felt in my last 500 hours of Siege before I stopped playing.
I'd definitely recommend it so far and I hope to put more hours into it. The only complaint I have is that the game explains nothing and the tutorial is terrible, you'll need to read the wiki and check out beginners' guides online to come into this on level-footing. Only 60% of the playerbase have the first achievement and I can entirely understand why 40% of people just gave up if they relied on the tutorials only.
Having played quite a bit more here are some things that I don't like:
- This game is at it's most chaotic and fun in a trio, duos are still fun and solo is too but the best experience is a trio for sure.
- Trials are absolutely awful, they are incredibly hard which would be fine if it didn't feel like much of the difficult came down to RNG. The sniping trials are the most fun but even then they feel like pulling teeth, the speedrun and especially the wave trials are just plain mind-numbing, I hate that they lock worthwhile unlocks behind this grind.
- Event grind, I've so far only experienced the Traitor's Moon event and wow the grind is significant, there is a clear effort to coax you into spending money which is fine given it's an almost 5 year old game and they need support but it feels heavy-handed.
- General clunkiness; I've heard a lot of people say this game is janky and honestly I don't agree, for the most part it is well put together, animations work as intended however sometimes guns will fire a second shot instantly when you don't mean to, it's as if they queue your attempts to fire and they execute it straight away. That would be fine if it did not take so long between shots. Fall damage kicks in even if you land on a surface mid-way through the fall then fall again from that which is just broken. Sometimes reloading doesn't work and you need to spam the key. Some prompts don't worry, twice I've come across fences that required me to stand in very specific spots to be able to jump them. All of these with the exception of the shooting issue haven't been a common occurance however.
The core loop is really samey and simple, stealth around, avoid noise traps, find clues, kill the boss, extract. The tension comes from knowing other players are doing the same thing and are trying to kill you. You can define your own win-state which makes the game as high-risk as you want it to be; you can try kill one or both bounties then extract, try wipe the server, try grind clues and grunt kills, or specifically hunt players and extract, all of which feels rewarding when you have permadeath characters.
I'm in love with the setting above all else, it's southern gothic in every aspect and while it does have paid cosmetics none of them break from the theme. There are some interesting weapons here too that wouldn't make sense in many other games, most of them have very slow fire rates, woeful iron sights, heavy sway and a steep learning curve. It's not easy to get kills in this game but when you do it feels hard-earned. Sometimes you'll get picked off from 70m away by a sniper without ever knowing where they were, other times you'll get into a 10 minute standoff that has more tension than anything I felt in my last 500 hours of Siege before I stopped playing.
I'd definitely recommend it so far and I hope to put more hours into it. The only complaint I have is that the game explains nothing and the tutorial is terrible, you'll need to read the wiki and check out beginners' guides online to come into this on level-footing. Only 60% of the playerbase have the first achievement and I can entirely understand why 40% of people just gave up if they relied on the tutorials only.
Having played quite a bit more here are some things that I don't like:
- This game is at it's most chaotic and fun in a trio, duos are still fun and solo is too but the best experience is a trio for sure.
- Trials are absolutely awful, they are incredibly hard which would be fine if it didn't feel like much of the difficult came down to RNG. The sniping trials are the most fun but even then they feel like pulling teeth, the speedrun and especially the wave trials are just plain mind-numbing, I hate that they lock worthwhile unlocks behind this grind.
- Event grind, I've so far only experienced the Traitor's Moon event and wow the grind is significant, there is a clear effort to coax you into spending money which is fine given it's an almost 5 year old game and they need support but it feels heavy-handed.
- General clunkiness; I've heard a lot of people say this game is janky and honestly I don't agree, for the most part it is well put together, animations work as intended however sometimes guns will fire a second shot instantly when you don't mean to, it's as if they queue your attempts to fire and they execute it straight away. That would be fine if it did not take so long between shots. Fall damage kicks in even if you land on a surface mid-way through the fall then fall again from that which is just broken. Sometimes reloading doesn't work and you need to spam the key. Some prompts don't worry, twice I've come across fences that required me to stand in very specific spots to be able to jump them. All of these with the exception of the shooting issue haven't been a common occurance however.
2017
This is my review from 2022 when the Devs pushed an update for the five year anniversary.
I don't know why the devs are making such a big deal about this game's 5th anniversary, they launched it and basically abandoned it straight away. I actually preferred it to Insurgency in some cases, the guns feel more fun, the maps for PVE are really well made, the gore and sound is better than Insurgency's too. I've less than 30 hours in this because it barely lasted and even checking the player count now with NWI's song and dance about its anniversary the peak player count in the last 24 hours was 309. It isn't that no one wanted to play this, it's that NWI let it die. Maybe it was for the best given how fun Sandstorm is, they obviously put their effort into that but don't waste your money on this, at this point they should make it F2P.
I don't know why the devs are making such a big deal about this game's 5th anniversary, they launched it and basically abandoned it straight away. I actually preferred it to Insurgency in some cases, the guns feel more fun, the maps for PVE are really well made, the gore and sound is better than Insurgency's too. I've less than 30 hours in this because it barely lasted and even checking the player count now with NWI's song and dance about its anniversary the peak player count in the last 24 hours was 309. It isn't that no one wanted to play this, it's that NWI let it die. Maybe it was for the best given how fun Sandstorm is, they obviously put their effort into that but don't waste your money on this, at this point they should make it F2P.
Sandstorm is one of the best multiplayer shooters available right now, PvP and Coop are both very fun. There's enough weapon customisation here to feel interesting without it feeling bloated. It's just solid right to its core.
I do have complaints though, number one being the map selection. In 9/10 games people in the lobby will always vote "Random" for whatever reason and without fail it will always be the worst map in the rotation followed by people complaining in the chat. It's not the devs fault but with how often this happens I wish they would remove the random option and force people to pick one of the six maps you can vote for at the end of a match.
What is the fault of the devs would be some of the maps not being fun - Bab is the worst offender in this case, the map feels too large and equally too small, it lacks the flow better maps like Tideway or Power Plant have.
I'll also use this review as my opportunity to cement my opinion that Ministry is one of the worst maps in the entire game and I have no idea why they chose for it to be ported over or why the community loves it. Then again the community still thinks shouting "yalla yalla" at the start and end of each match is the peak of comedy.
In short, amazing game, lame community, play with music on in the background.
I do have complaints though, number one being the map selection. In 9/10 games people in the lobby will always vote "Random" for whatever reason and without fail it will always be the worst map in the rotation followed by people complaining in the chat. It's not the devs fault but with how often this happens I wish they would remove the random option and force people to pick one of the six maps you can vote for at the end of a match.
What is the fault of the devs would be some of the maps not being fun - Bab is the worst offender in this case, the map feels too large and equally too small, it lacks the flow better maps like Tideway or Power Plant have.
I'll also use this review as my opportunity to cement my opinion that Ministry is one of the worst maps in the entire game and I have no idea why they chose for it to be ported over or why the community loves it. Then again the community still thinks shouting "yalla yalla" at the start and end of each match is the peak of comedy.
In short, amazing game, lame community, play with music on in the background.